Worth It
by takaxdesu
Summary: Would he say he felt regret? Yes, but deep inside he knew the pain would end. The tears would stop, and he would be free. Continued from I Didn't Mean To Hurt You.


_Tell me it isn't real...__It can't be real...__Please let him come home...__I miss his squealing, girlish voice already.._

Yuki didn't know how not to torment himself. Guilt flooded through his body as if it were blood, contaminating his thoughts, permeating from his seeemimngly lifeless golden eyes...the once beautiful amber eyes that showed so much love for Shuichi for so many years. Self-imposed guilt was how he lived...it was how he dealt with it when he killed Kitazawa..._when I killed the only one who understood me._

_But..._

_Was I Shuichi's problem too?_

He let this thought linger...had he really been the reason Shuichi had gotten so sick so fast? Was it the heartbreak, was it the pain, or was it something else? Why? Yuki didn't know why Shuichi was gone. All he knew was that his husband got real bad one night, Yuki drove him to the hospital...but he never got to drive him home. It was just a cold, the doctors told him, over and over again that was what he heard, but what had weakened Shuichi's body so badly that a common flu was able to take his life? There had to be an underlying cause...those days were lost to the author...those days didn't exist in his memories.

Then like an avalanche in the winter, the reason for his beloved's death hit him harder than he could ever begin to prepare for...it was the cancer. Cancer ate away at Shuichi slowly...that was the reason for most of their fights...the stress caused by the younger man's disease. The stress that forced him to end the band Bad Luck. The stress that drove him to write the words to _Beaten Out. _The stress that as an author, as a professional, published author, Yuki could never hope to understand. He never wrote anything like this in his novels.

Guilt ran through him once more. If he hadn't fought with his husband, maybe he wouldn't have succumbed so easily...maybe he wouldn't be forced to spend a lifetime alone. Maybe...but that was like a what if. What if they had a perfect marriage, what if they never went to bed angry, _what if? _Knowing the question wasn't enough...Yuki had to have the answer...he wouldn't be able to move on, he'd never find himself capable of understanding anything. It wasn't him, being the emotional, 'let's talk about it, make it feel better' person, he was the 'bug off, I can't talk about it' person.

Lightheadedness swept through him, and he willingly fell onto the soft cushion of his living room couch. He glanced to either side of him, usually Shuichi would join him and lean against him, but not this time. Shuichi was dead, and Yuki wasn't a magician, he couldn't turn back time. No matter how much he wanted to, there was no going back to day one, no going back to fix the problem he felt that his own ignorance and stubbornness had caused.

He closed his eyes and laid on his back on the couch, resting his head on the armrest, touching a hand to his forehead as the darkness behind his eyelids morphed into an image of what seemed to be an angel. He smiled without thinking about it, this angel had hair that seemed all too familiar.

As he watched this angel come towards him, he thought of the day he came back to this apartment, the day he returned home. The first person he had called when he couldn't take it, couldn't stand to sit there alone, had been his sister, Mika Uesugi-Seguchi. He smiled, his sister was so good about being there for him. The angel was closer, Yuki could almost see his face, he turned his head to let an invisible hand stroke his cheek to swipe away his tears, he twitched his fingers around a nonexistant hand that held tightly onto his own. He opened his eyes, his lips felt so warm...then he saw nothing.

Tears streamed down his face, he was sure Shuichi was the one that came to him, those eyes were unmistakable, it had to be him, he looked so healthy, so happy, he looked as if he had never been sick. His lips quivered as he covered his face with his hands, still laying on the couch, unable to get up for fear of collapsing to the floor in tearful desperation.

The amber eyes hidden by golden hair flared with frustration, he was not going to be able to deal with this. Not for the rest of his life, it wasn't going to happen. He wouldn't try. Emptiness swelled inside him, slowly engulfing his entire being, and he embraced the sensation, letting go of his pain, his hurt. He produced two pieces of paper from his pocket, neatly folded and sealed closed. One was the letter he had written for his husband, the other was blank except for a few simple words.

_Let me take the letter with me, even if it takes me to the grave._

His pain slowly vanished, his tears came to a stop, the river of anguish had finally dried up, after seven years of flowing freely, Eiri Yuki's tears would fall no more. One small breath, one small smile, and he left. Left a tormented mind, a somewhat abandoned body, a cruel world. All of it was left behind as he approached a set of pearly gates, clutching tightly to the hand he had intended to die holding, his last breath no more than a simple memory.

Now, Yuki understood.

_Fin_

**_So there you have it. I've ended it, and I hope I've given you what you wanted. Hope you enjoyed it. I know I loved writing it. _**


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